A year in France

Cardinal Lemon’s Lonely Hearts Club

Every metro system ,I think, has at least one or two metro stations whose names really stick out and appeal to me.

In Buenos Aires, I loved the Scalabrini Ortiz stop. I rarely, if ever, actually exited at this stop, but I rode past it to and from classes every day for a semester in college. I used to joke that, if I ever had a son, I would name him Scalabrini Ortiz. Or a dog, maybe.

In Chicago, I loved hearing the automated voice announce that we were nearing “Merchandise Mart.” It just seems like such as silly name for a stop downtown – like there’s K-Mart, Wal-Mart and then the cumbersome “Merchandise Mart.”

So last week, when I was in Paris, I took a ride on Line 10 (on the map, it’s the puke-colored line, although one friends insists the color is actually ‘mustard’). I was delighted to find my new favorite Metro stop — Cardinal Lemoine.

It works better if you put on a thick Midwestern-American accent and call it “Cardinal Lemon.” The station itself didn’t look like anything special, but the name – oh, the name! I’ll never be able to forget this one. It sounds like the name of an indie rock band, or a coughdrop brand.

The possibililies are really endless. Cardinal Lemon could even be a character in the French version of the board game Clue (It’s Cardinal Lemon! In the Drawing Room! With a stale baguette!).

I later found out that Cardinal Jean Lemoine (1250-1313) was a papal legate of Pope Boniface VIII to Philip IV the Fair. Kind of boring, right?

My second favorite stop is the really lame-sounding station “Maubert-Mutualité.” If Cardinal Lemon’s station was named by some hip artist, then this stop was definitely coined by some uptight businessman, maybe even that guy at INSEAD’s library who keeps shhh-ing me.

Maubert-Mutualité sounds like what resulted from a long-awaited, much-discussed and debated merger between two ailing French life insurance companies.

“Thanks to Maubert-Mutualité, I can be rest assured that, even if something happens to me, my wife and the petit garçon will live comfortably,” the handsome French man will say on the company’s television ad.

Solferino! That’s the name of my future dog. That’s in Paris. My favorite subway stop name of all time is Hoyt-Schermerhorn in Brooklyn. It’s just so preposterous. I went thru it all the time on the G line and then I would be stuck saying in my head over and over for the rest of the day.